Charles -- Please update us with the upstream status of this request.

 IBM is also interested in seeing the feature in RHEL 6

------- Comment From ratliff.com 2009-08-18 14:58 EDT-------
1. Feature Overview:
Feature Id:	[202015]
a. Name of Feature:	Switch qemu to use gpxe option rom for netboot
b. Feature Description
Switch qemu over to using gpxe option rom for network booting

2. Feature Details:
Sponsor:	LTC
Architectures:
x86
x86_64

Arch Specificity: Both
Affects Kernel Modules: Yes
Delivery Mechanism: Backport
Category:	Xen
Request Type:	Driver - Feature from Upstream
d. Upstream Acceptance:	In Progress
Sponsor Priority	2
f. Severity: Medium
IBM Confidential:	no
Code Contribution:	IBM code
g. Component Version Target:	gPXE 0.97 or newer, gemu-0.12 or newer

3. Business Case
IBM has a number of products that require a richer netweork booting environment.  Tivoli Provision manager has a program that makes extensive use of PXE UNDI mode which has much better support in gPXE than the current etherboot module.  Additionally, gPXE also includes iSCSI booting support which is a key diskless technology that IBM employs in bare-metal scenarios.  Adding gPXE allows virtualization to fit more seamlessly into existing customer environments.

4. Primary contact at Red Hat:
John Jarvis
jjarvis

5. Primary contacts at Partner:
Project Management Contact:
Stephanie Glass, sglass.com, 512-838-9284

Technical contact(s):
Ryan Arnold, ryanarn.com

IBM Manager:
Warren Grunbok II, grunbok.com

Reassigning to KVM as was initially intended.

*** Bug 464589 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

qemu-kvm uses gpxe since the first RHEL-6 packages were out. marking as MODIFIED.

Test in qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.38.el6.x86_64,kernel-2.6.32-19.el6.x86_64.

#rpm -qf /usr/share/qemu-kvm/pxe-virtio.bin
qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.38.el6.x86_64
#ls -l /usr/share/qemu-kvm/pxe-virtio.bin
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 22 Apr 19 17:11 /usr/share/qemu-kvm/pxe-virtio.bin -> ../gpxe/virtio-net.rom


Boot guest from network

   1. /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm -no-hpet -usbdevice tablet -rtc-td-hack -no-kvm-pit-reinjection -startdate now -drive file=RHEL-Server-5.5-64-virtio.qcow2,media=disk,format=qcow2,if=virtio,boot=on,cache=off,index=0 -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=10:1a:4a:10:20:40,model=e1000 -net tap,vlan=0,ifname=e1000_11_1,script=/etc/qemu-ifup -cpu qemu64,+sse2 -balloon none -vnc :10 -uuid `uuidgen` -monitor stdio -m 2G -smp 2 -boot n

Can boot and install the guest successfully.

Change the status to verified then close it according to Comment 12.

Doing  root boot using iSCSI requires that the NIC option ROM gets the root path from a source -
Some of the methods are -

1) DHCP server ( option 17) 
2) iBFT

gpxe option rom being part of qemu-kvm is step 1) that has been accomplished but the testing done above does not seem to be accurate.

The test has to be performed in the following way -

1) Install OS on the remote iSCSI LUN. (This can be done normally as is done using physical servers)

2) Patch the DHCP server with the following option and restart it -

filename "";
  option root-path "iscsi:my.target.dns.name::::iqn.2007-08.name.dns.target.my:iscsiboot";



I don't think creating a local disk image is necessary.. as we are booting from the remote target
Steps too boot from iSCSI target

3) The gpxe option rom would obtain the IP + root-path info from the DHCP server. 

4) Now that gpxe is already part of the qemu-kvm package booting with PXE option should provide the root path if the DHCP server is properly patched.


I can't setup my own DHCP server in (: so unable to test this..


-Shyam